Deo Adelphos
by cistakins
Summary: Inspired by God Save our King and Saiyuki, this is another other-world story that chronicles the life and laugh of a young lady stuck and trying to find her justification of a home while in sapre time, saving the world! Of course with a big twist!
1. Prologue

DEO ADELPHOS – Resurrection (part one)

**DEO ADELPHOS – Resurrection (part one)**

By cistakins

PROLOGUE

The sign on the wall above the headboard says:

"The Daughter of Gaea: In her hands shall be the salvation of this Land; in her choices the welfare of her own Mother Gaea."

The man whom they call Grand Counselor lingered on the words a while, immersing himself both in the reverie of the prophecy and the hope of his own prayer. He knew the rest of it, the prophecy. It filled up a whole book. That line was only part of it…but it was the most important. So important in fact, that he had spent his whole life figuring it. Seeking its understanding. Its fulfillment.

'Gaea… Daughter Gaea…,' the woman in bed was shaking, her wrinkled fists up in the air, her teary eyes looking up at heaven, seeing something that isn't there. 'Daughter of Gaea!'

The healers looked at each other. What was there to do? The prophetess was dying, they were sure. No matter how much she calls up to the Acros, even to God, Theos, there was nothing left to do… It was her fate now to be relieved of the body she had worn for over three centuries. They looked up at him, the Grand Counselor. Surely he knew what do…

And yet, he did not stir. He looked and waited, a vague thoughtful look on his vague sea green eyes. He knew something… And what he knew was of outmost importance.

She will die, that he knew well, and the others, too. It was inevitable. She was far too old for any incantations or healings now. But what was important would be found only at the culmination of her death. That culmination which would reveal the most important words yet to be spoken in five million years of waiting. He knew this… After all rigorous studies and exploration, he knew… He could feel it.

'Daughter of Gaea!' The dying woman suddenly sat up, jolting all those around her. She had her arms pointed upwards, her face looking up at heaven with an expression both of fear and ecstasy, as if begging mercy from the Acros, asking one last favor from Theos, the Great God of All. 'Daughter of Gaea!' Abruptly, she became rigid, as if seized by the heart with the cold hand of Hades, her breath becoming rapid and shallow.

The healers gasped and tried to put her back to bed. But they could not. It was as if an invisible power had frozen her body.

'On the last day of the first month… On the first hour at dusk… Within the holy walls of the Royals… In the chamber of the Princess…', she whispered, so softly and calmly as though she was not in a fit. 'The Daughter of Gaea…'

And with those words, her frail body slumped back to the bed. Lifeless…

The man whom they call Grand Counselor lowered his head. For five eons they had all waited… And for ninety years he had searched…asking if his own conclusions would lead him right.

And indeed, it did…


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One: Introduction to the Eccentric

Chapter One: Introduction to the Eccentric

When Eris saw the hooded man enter Bibo's shop, she knew something was not right. And indeed she was right. The thug held up a gun even before she had peeked through her friend's shop window.

Wasting no time nor _thought _at all, she sped in the antique shop and lunged towards the robber's pointed gun. There was a blast. A scream. Then a struggle.

The next thing she knew, she was falling…falling off the high cliff where Bibo's shop was peculiarly and rather precariously perched, holding something small in her hand, thought what it was she did not have time to find out…

And then, there was nothing…

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Anyone who had a sense would not have minded Eris, or at least would not think of her as something extraordinary in the great positive sense of the word. She was an unusual girl, taken in an unusual family with an unusual trade and unusual habits. She was definitely_ not_ ordinary, not only because she was an orphan but also because of the incident that had happened the day she was born (and rather the following incidents after that).

There had been a fire. A great fire. It swallowed the whole hospital that very minute she uttered her first cry… That day was a marked day for amidst such enormity of flames, the earth thundered and the winds howled, and a hard storm enveloped the place.

A tragedy indeed. Everyone but she, of all people who could have survived, survived… She had not even the chance to neither feel her mother's arms nor hear her father's cry of joy at her birth. They, along with the rest of that facility which brought her to the world, turned into ashes.

What's more peculiar was the fact that she had been adopted by the most sought-after-though-rather-eccentric couple among millions of orphans when she herself had not been conscious of having applied nor interviewed for adoption. She was thankful nonetheless. Her new family- consisted of a duck-obsessed foster father she calls 'Uncle' and pie-making foster mother she accordingly calls 'Aunt'-was loving and gracious. They were also a rich couple, owning a chain of antique shops (called oDD shops) which are known world-over for their trustworthy authenticity and unusual locations: (mostly) atop a high hill or cliff.

Many would call her lucky. And lucky indeed she was. Of course, it was eventually this luck which made her into a loner, in school and practically elsewhere with any possibility of socialization. It was not that she was an orphan, that already been set straight. Unlike most orphans she read or watched about, she was neither resentful nor lonely of having had not met her real parents. She understood it was impossible, what could she do? She was not a rebellious child, nor a dysfunctional one and she loves her new home as much as it loves her back. She was a happy albeit sarcastic kid. In fact, she was, as her parents were, sought-after by young people like her, wanting to become her friends and share lunches with her.

She would not however. She would not befriend rich girls like her for she thought them way beyond her. Jocks frightened her for they were tall and she was strangely but instinctively frightened of very tall people. Goths scared her out. Emos depressed her. Loners repelled her and nerds couldn't get her… So she sat in the 'nobody' section of her cafeteria, contentedly observing all those socializing people around her. It was for this reason that she was an outsider, loving and beloved by only two persons as unusual as her in the world: her parents.

Of course, it rarely _never _crossed her mind to at least have one true friend. She did try but it ended in disaster. And so…She would go to school alone, go back home alone… Sometimes, she would visit one of her parent's oDD shops, just to see what was new of the old and feel the vibe of an ancient-looking store, which she loved for since her introduction to the ancients (at the first free time after her adoption), she had since loved the bizarre and the old.

That was what led her to meet Bibo, the store manager of an oDD shop nearest to her apartment in Newlands Valley, the very first one in fact, and the most dangerously set: on top of a cliffhanger on one of the mountain in the valley, overlooking a dangerous though rather beautiful sea… And that was what had started her mutual relationship with the kindly albeit adroitly argumentative Bibo, whom she never misses from visiting every Thursdays when she goes home from University early.

This friendship (plus her impulsiveness) was the main factor and essential reason why she was now falling. And as she did so, as her body toppled over the accidentally broken and oddly huge glass window, as her toes tingled with the sensation of falling down and deep, she recalled these things…induced it in fact for strangely, as she was falling down, her life didn't flash before her eyes. Thus, she _made_ it flash before her eyes…

And, as the last scene of her life closed, her eyes also did as she prepared her body to feel the one last collision she would ever feel, thinking here and there how odd it was that her cap remained on her head, and her backpack on her back. She thought it would have flown away before she dies. She supposed it wouldn't… She smiled…

_Goodbye, world…_

00000

_Am I dead?_

These were the words that immediately popped in Eris' head the moment a ray of light entered through her eyelids. Her body hurt and she was aware that her limbs are strewn at different disconcerting angles. Momentarily, she couldn't move. She could feel the jagged edges of the rocks beneath her and the wind splashing furiously on her face.

However, there was no water…

She fell into a cliffhanger overlooking a rather _watery_ sea… And yet, no water? In her daze, Eris frowned, her eyes still closed, her body still aching.

_Maybe this was heaven_, she thought. Maybe it was God's grace that saved her from the pain of enduring even a split-second excruciating collision… But then, why did it hurt? Heaven wasn't supposed to hurt, was it? She had heard it a thousand times - amidst her own bored gazes and sleepy yawns - at masses that heaven is a sanctuary where there is no pain, no suffering, no sadness, no despair… So why on earth was she hurting? Unless, this was…

'Hell?' That jolted her up, her backbone pulling up in a snap that from suddenly opening her eyes, she immediately suddenly closed it again, giving out a loud groan of pain. 'Oh…!' This was definitely _not_ heaven.

Slowly as she let her body twist to its normal shape, Eris opened her eyes… And as she did so, her mouth dropped.

She was also most definitely not in a sea nor a shore nor a cliff…or anywhere with waters in particular. Rather and mysteriously too, she was in a hill, a peculiarly wide one at that. A vast stretch of swaying tall grasses covered the whole of the hill, cascading down into a smooth slope to welcome a rather dense forest, as green as the grass themselves. Behind her, only inches from she supposed to have landed was a large edifice of stone: a chapel. It stood taller than most chapels Eris had seen and was carved into a design that was part- Jacobean and part-Victorian, with the Gothic arches and ceilings of the towers jutting in the very blue sky.

She stood up, fixing her cap on. _Wow_, she thought, realizing suddenly the presence of her cap. She turned and accordingly, found her blue backpack lying on a conglomeration of rocks, where she presumed she had fallen to…

_But from where?_

She frowned, turning around almost exaggeratedly as she tried to figure what phenomenon had occurred so peculiarly to her. There was no way that there had been a cliffhanger somewhere. The stretch of what the eye could see was all green, the dense forest until the far horizon where the fog created a vague outline of black mountains.

She gazed at her still aching self. There were no scratches nor any visible sign of either cuts or bruises that would be evident and aching so excruciatingly when one jumps off a tall building, or say, a cliff perhaps – which one would usually not feel at the end of the jump as one would be dead by then. It was evident she was _not_ dead, and the pain she was feeling was the kind of a body ache, she presumed the ache equal that of intense rheumatism attack…which she nonetheless definitely did _not_ like at all. In any case, it was nothing so serious.

At least, the pain was not as serious as the issue staring her at the face in the moment. Where on earth was she? And how on earth did she get here? She scratched her left earlobe, a habit she does whenever she's either confused or lying… And she was definitely _not_ lying at the moment.

'Hey!'

She turned, surprised to hear a voice.

'Give it to us, old man! Get now! Give it…!' It was a boy's voice. About her age. Maybe older.

A groan. An old man's pained groan.

'Come now! Give it here!' Another boy's voice.

A punch. A cry. Then, a chorus of harsh laughter.

Frowning much more, Eris followed the sound and found the source of it round the chapel, at its left wing entrance.

There, she saw three thugs, not unlike the one she had encountered at Bibo's shop, the one that had thrown her out of the smashed window before falling knock out to the ground - a great reminiscence of her own mysterious death. They were in all black – black shirts, black baggy pants, black cloth-belt, black cloaks and even unusual flat black caps. They were huddled round an old dude in white – which was quite ironical – who was crunched up in the ground and moaning in pain.

Feeling the same troublesome sense of justice erring her again to impulsion, Eris stepped up, fists clenched defensively, and screamed at the black-clad thugs just as she had at Bibo's shop. 'Stop it, you bastards!'

They stopped, gazing first at each other, then looked up at her.

Thugs such as they, almost as young as she was and not armed like her recent antagonist was, would usually bolt off after having been spotted, not wanting brush with the law again, probably for the millionth time… These thugs however did not seem to mind the law.

Oh, they did stop harassing the poor curled old ma. However, they did this to…turn to her.

'Hey, she's got a bag!' The black-haired, cringed-nosed of them cried, in a rather crooked Irish accent impersonation. He was quite oddly – though now naturally for her as everything seemed to be very odd now – carrying a brown paper bag full of what looked to be like apples.

At this mark, they started towards her.

'Oh, not good…,' Eris started to move back and run.

But before she could even take a full speed of a sprint, a rough calloused hand grabbed her by the nape and pulled her down with such immense a force that she had not even the chance to struggle out of it.

The three blacks snickered and leered as they took her backpack, one of them pinning her to the ground with a vice-like grip on her shoulders and neck.

'Ei! Look what we got 'ere!'' The brown paper bag guy rummaged through her things. 'Unusual things! Maybe we can sell them…!'

'No! Stop it! That's mine…!' Eris struggled with the full of her force, having been able to at least sit up and reach out. But then, she was pulled again by the vice grip man, thrusting her so hard to the grassy ground that her cap fell off.

'Ow!' She groaned.

There were gasps.

'A woman!' The third of the thugs, a skinny guy, cried. His clothes and cloak were hanging about his small frame like a grim reaper in Halloween.

'A red-haired woman!' gasped the Vicegrip, his tone reminiscent to her of the strong though dumb-headed guys on television shows.

'It's auburn, you idiot!' She kicked and punched in the air but, no matter how surprised the Vicegrip guy seemed, his arm remained firm.

'Ooohh… A spirited girl, this one…' Paperbag went over her and dropped both her backpack and the brown paper bag filled with…that's right, apples, though rather weird-looking ones as an individual apple seemed to be composed of two apples connected to each other to make 8-shaped apple-fruits. The thug gave her a dark look…one she most definitely did not like.

'I don't care if you're a red haired… We're going to have so much fun with you…' He knelt down and reached out to her.

But before he had hardly touched her cheeks with the tip of a finger, Paperbag – who was technically not carrying a paper bag filled with 8-shaped apples anymore – was suddenly pulled bag.

'Arrrghhh…!' He cried as his head was grabbed from behind and a white fist collided so hard on his nose that his whole head was pushed down to the ground, his nose cracking, blood spurting.

His two minions, Skinny and Vicegrip, seeing their leader brought down with one fist, stood up and ran towards the attacker – Eris' defender for that matter. Eris was released from the suffocating grip of the thug and scrambled to move away from the evident fistfight, wide-eyed as the attacker clashed with the thugs in a speed that almost defy the very foundation of physics.

The attacker had finished of Paperbag with a punch and had rendered him unconscious. He turned just in time to see the two thugs coming up at him. In a fluid motion, he crouched down and tripped Skinny in a round kick. Then, raising himself up in split second movement, he hit the big thug squarely on the belly, throwing him out with such a force.

The two squirmed in the ground, groaning. But just for a while. In a minute, they were up again and ran once more towards their opponent, looking like helpless dwarfs against a giant.

And then, they stopped in their tracks.

A gun was pointed at them. It was a large barreled magnum-looking handgun, gray and shinning under the light of the sun, looking most foreboding and dangerous as the expression of its holder.

'I have neither time nor patience to play with weaklings. Hit it or die…' was the simple statement mention, almost in a low casual way.

The thugs wasted no time indeed. They took off, carrying their still knockout leader, leaving Eris behind.

She would have run too, hadn't the gunslinger turned to her, a cold face on. She wondered for a moment if now was her time to die. But then, he did just save her… Why would he have saved her if he would kill her eventually? Besides, he didn't look like a person who would kill for no reason, even as he held a gun, which now he put back on his belt.

He was a rather tall man, though not enough to scare her totally, his stature was poised, his physique very athletic, though his face was pale and cold. His hair was of glowing golden mane, shinning under the ray of a near setting sun. His face was heart-shaped; his eyes of equally swirling golden colors, as if the color was itself a fluid moving round his irises. His features were masculine and stern: a strong jaw, a set forehead, a high nose and pursed scarlet lips, exaggerating that narrowed, irritated and rather ominous look on his eyes.

He walked towards her. She noticed now that he was wearing an odd-looking yellow priest robe, zipped opened on a bandaged chest and sagging to the shoulders. It reminded her of the robes worn usually by Catholic priests, only at a different color, and with a thick, contrasting black belt studded with handguns with very large barrels, bullets and small surreptitious knives. It was a wonder how so many weapons could fit in one belt.

Another wonder was how she could not have run already seeing those weapons.

He stepped beside her, looking down at her with that same annoyed expression. She moved away from him, stumbling over apples.

He stooped, rolling his eyes slightly in impatience. 'You're on my things...' His voice was grumpy as his expression.

'Huh?' She turned around confused. Then, she saw the odd shaped apples, most of them rolling out of the brown, now crumpled paper bag.

'Oh!' Eris jumped out of the apples. 'I'm sorry…!' She started collecting the rolling apples and putting it on the paper bag. But he suddenly grabbed the bag from her, and with such a snap that she didn't realize it until it was already gone.

Not minding her at all, he put back all apples in the bag and stood. He gazed at her coldly.

Eris squirmed under that gaze, as she would most gazes. It was like a torture to confess something she did not even do. Finally, she said uneasily. 'Err… Thank you for that…' She slowly stood up and extended a hand.

He looked at her hand, then back at her face, making her feel more disconcerted. Then, stretching out his hand also, he dropped a small pendant on her palm. 'You dropped it…'

Eris looked at it confusedly. It was a small yet heavy silver necklace, with a triangular silver pendant, engraved on its six edges with small ruby-looking stones. It was shining under the light of the sun, just like the gunslinger's hair and eyes. She frowned. 'This isn't mine--'

'Huh?' Her eyes searched the place frantically, her head turning round and round as his joint would go, desperation starting to settle in on her.

The man was gone. He was most definitely nowhere to be seen. Not even a shadow or a slowly disappearing mirage of him can be seen. He just…disappeared. Vanished like that into thin air. Magic…

She groaned. Not even her own self-professed lame jokes can lift her up now.

Frustrated and at lost, Eris stared at the empty mound of grassy field before her, her body weary, her mind confused. She rubbed her left earlobe and uttered the most despaired three words that day:

'What is happening?'

00000


End file.
